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What American Girl story can be counted complete without its “Looking Back” essay at the end? These sections include background information underlying the action in the book (of the "So why did the War of 1812 happen, anyway?" variety) or fun information related, sometimes vaguely, to the action of the book (colonial Christmas traditions!), or occasionally a “So this story is pretty much historical bunk” mea culpa.
It doesn’t particularly bother me that American Girl sometimes purveys quite unlikely tales, like Felicity’s whole horse-stealing episode. These are stories intended to interest seven-year-olds in history, not monographs.
In my case, this is not so much an essay about history as a “Bless me, father, for I have sinned” section. I did almost no research for this story, beyond the information about the Revolutionary Era that I’ve picked up over the years. (I am happy to report, however, the Elizabeth could have sung “Auld Lang Syne” for Felicity: though Burns didn’t record it till 1788, it was a Scottish folk tune for years before then. She wouldn’t have called it one of “the latest songs from London,” though.)
Many of Felicity’s attitudes are really more reminiscent of the nineteenth century than the eighteenth: the whole “If I were man, I’d marry you!” thing, for instance, draws on whole strings of nineteenth-century women (some of whom went on to marry men, and some of whom lived in Boston marriages with women) saying similar things.
M. Carey Thomas, in 1880: “If it were only possible for women to elect women as well as men for a [life’s] love” (Sicherman, Well-Read Lives, 125)
Julia Newberry, 1870s: “If I were man, would n’t I be a flirt!”
And to round things off, a book character from 1870: “It is so beautiful!” continued Lottie, passing a hand caressingly over [Elsie’s hair]; “and so is its wearer. Oh, if I were only a gentleman!”
“You don’t wish it,” said Elsie, laughing. “I don’t believe a real, womanly woman ever does.”
“You don’t, hey?” (Martha Finley, Elsie’s Girlhood, 200.)
Elsie is Finley’s mouthpiece for appropriate Christian values: be meek, be mild, obey your father in all things (and like it!). Clearly Finley felt that this whole “If I were only a man, I would so tap that” was common enough to need nipping in the bud.
In sum: Felicity is a woman ahead of her time.
A few genuinely 18th century details:
Felicity’s comment that women ought to know about current events because “Who do you think will raise our children as good republicans if not women, Benjamin Davidson?” refers to the ideal of republican motherhood, which was very popular among women in the post-Revolutionary years. Felicity’s comment basically sums up the ideal.
The letter to Felicity’s grandfather references a letter complaining about the hospitality at Washington’s Mount Vernon (which I read in David Hackett’s Albion’s Seed, a fascinating book about regional culture in the US). The writer – who was writing to a friend, not Washington himself (whoever wrote Felicity’s grandfather must have been very ill-bred indeed!) – thought he ought to have been provided with a sex slave for the stay.
The issue of freeing slaves was a contemporary concern among Virginia planters. During the Revolutionary era, lots of planters slavery ought to be abolished – largely because, c.f. Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia, they thought it had a bad effect on freeborn whites, by making them despise honest labor. But most of them, like Jefferson, didn’t free their slaves, or (like Washington) freed them only in their wills.
The original Felicity books, for all that one of them takes place on a plantation, don’t deal with slavery at all. Felicity and co. have about as much insight into their slave’s inner lives as contemporary accounts suggest most masters did – which is to say, none at all. (In Passion is the Gale, Nicole Eustace argues that ignoring slave’s feelings is a method of oppression that dates back to the ancient Greeks. Aristotle argued that ‘natural’ slaves lack thumos, or spirit, and are thus emotionless.)
I suspect it is not an accident that Addy’s books, about a girl who escapes slavery during the Civil War, were the next series released after Felicity’s.
It doesn’t particularly bother me that American Girl sometimes purveys quite unlikely tales, like Felicity’s whole horse-stealing episode. These are stories intended to interest seven-year-olds in history, not monographs.
In my case, this is not so much an essay about history as a “Bless me, father, for I have sinned” section. I did almost no research for this story, beyond the information about the Revolutionary Era that I’ve picked up over the years. (I am happy to report, however, the Elizabeth could have sung “Auld Lang Syne” for Felicity: though Burns didn’t record it till 1788, it was a Scottish folk tune for years before then. She wouldn’t have called it one of “the latest songs from London,” though.)
Many of Felicity’s attitudes are really more reminiscent of the nineteenth century than the eighteenth: the whole “If I were man, I’d marry you!” thing, for instance, draws on whole strings of nineteenth-century women (some of whom went on to marry men, and some of whom lived in Boston marriages with women) saying similar things.
M. Carey Thomas, in 1880: “If it were only possible for women to elect women as well as men for a [life’s] love” (Sicherman, Well-Read Lives, 125)
Julia Newberry, 1870s: “If I were man, would n’t I be a flirt!”
And to round things off, a book character from 1870: “It is so beautiful!” continued Lottie, passing a hand caressingly over [Elsie’s hair]; “and so is its wearer. Oh, if I were only a gentleman!”
“You don’t wish it,” said Elsie, laughing. “I don’t believe a real, womanly woman ever does.”
“You don’t, hey?” (Martha Finley, Elsie’s Girlhood, 200.)
Elsie is Finley’s mouthpiece for appropriate Christian values: be meek, be mild, obey your father in all things (and like it!). Clearly Finley felt that this whole “If I were only a man, I would so tap that” was common enough to need nipping in the bud.
In sum: Felicity is a woman ahead of her time.
A few genuinely 18th century details:
Felicity’s comment that women ought to know about current events because “Who do you think will raise our children as good republicans if not women, Benjamin Davidson?” refers to the ideal of republican motherhood, which was very popular among women in the post-Revolutionary years. Felicity’s comment basically sums up the ideal.
The letter to Felicity’s grandfather references a letter complaining about the hospitality at Washington’s Mount Vernon (which I read in David Hackett’s Albion’s Seed, a fascinating book about regional culture in the US). The writer – who was writing to a friend, not Washington himself (whoever wrote Felicity’s grandfather must have been very ill-bred indeed!) – thought he ought to have been provided with a sex slave for the stay.
The issue of freeing slaves was a contemporary concern among Virginia planters. During the Revolutionary era, lots of planters slavery ought to be abolished – largely because, c.f. Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia, they thought it had a bad effect on freeborn whites, by making them despise honest labor. But most of them, like Jefferson, didn’t free their slaves, or (like Washington) freed them only in their wills.
The original Felicity books, for all that one of them takes place on a plantation, don’t deal with slavery at all. Felicity and co. have about as much insight into their slave’s inner lives as contemporary accounts suggest most masters did – which is to say, none at all. (In Passion is the Gale, Nicole Eustace argues that ignoring slave’s feelings is a method of oppression that dates back to the ancient Greeks. Aristotle argued that ‘natural’ slaves lack thumos, or spirit, and are thus emotionless.)
I suspect it is not an accident that Addy’s books, about a girl who escapes slavery during the Civil War, were the next series released after Felicity’s.
